Showdown

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...No national politician defends the status quo about welfare, taxes, crime, or affirmative action...

...Gingrich, she writes, "had a lively and far-ranging if not a very deep or disciplined mind...

...Any leader with the notion to expatiate on power, especially to journalists, instead of nurturing and wielding the stuff, will soon find the power slipping away: to journalists at first, and then to other, slightly less garrulous but equally determined politicians...

...Not least, Congress was reminded of the powers of the presidency, and as every Republican since Dwight Eisenhower has learned, of the perils and frustrations of divided government...

...This is the besetting defect of journalism: a tendency to overestimate the importance of present circumstances, a weakness for confident predictions about the future based on a series of evanescent facts, the failure to place a wealth of events and a truckload of stories in plausible perspective...

...While it is apparent now that the election of 1994 was a beginning, not the end, of a broad realignment, that was not so obvious to everyone at the time...

...Part of the answer lies in Gingrich himself, whose picture is drawn here in meticulous detail, and partly in the character of politics itself...

...This is, in press terms, seen as an astute appropriation of traditional Republican themes...

...It contains implements you'll need eve day: kni e, scissors, nail file, tweezers and toothpick...

...that is to say, his actions are derived from beliefs, not expediency...

...He was an unusual combination of the roughneck politician and the politician of ideas...

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...As Showdown went to press, Bill Clinton, once thought to be mortally wounded by the electoral reproach of Be prepared for life's little contingencies, with...

...The Democrats framed rancorous budgetary issues in shrewd political terms...

...Yet just as Drew and nearly everybody else misconstrued the implications of 1994, assuming that the world had been turned upside down, so has she misread 1996 as well...

...With virtues, however, come various imperfections...

...But whatever temporary advantage Clinton and the Democrats enjoy must be seen in a broader context...

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...The Speaker made frequent stops —posing for photographs, chatting with tourists, embellishing his disquisition on power —while she scribbled furiously in her notebook...

...There is no consensus for broader regulation, or extension of federal leverage against the states...

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...It is a typically, one might say profoundly, exhaustive work from the author of Senator, a worshipful portrait of Iowa's John Culver, and Campaign Journal...

...He is also a politician of principle...

...On the contrary...

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...That is what happened to the Speaker, of course, in just one year...

...It was also, I remember thinking at the PHILIP TERZIAN writes a column from Washington for the Providence Journal...

...Every national politician now acknowledges the primacy of balancing the budget, of cutting government waste, of reducing, not extending, the federal role in civic life...

...This shift in sentiment is, by any measure, a remarkable occurrence — indeed, it comes closest to Newt Gingrich's persistent reference to revolution...

...This is not to say that Showdown is by any means the last word on the subject...

...Struggling to Make Sense of the Obvious Showdown: The Struggle Between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House Elizabeth Drew Simon & Schuster /398 pages $25 REVIEWED BY Philip Terzian Elizabeth Drew begins with an arresting image: "On the afternoon of January 4, opening day of the first session of the io4th Congress, Newt Gingrich, the newly sworn-in Speaker of the House, was striding across the Capitol Plaza, and giving a disquisition on power...

...then a pair of real working scissors...

...and that is the sum and substance of Drew's account of the legislative struggle between Gingrich and President Clinton...

...All those disquisitions on power had not prepared the Speaker and his enterprising colleagues for its arbitrary nature, or the smooth manipulation of public opinion...

...She doesn't mention that, during the royal progress between the Longworth House office building and the Capitol, two journalists hovered near the Speaker: Drew herself on his right, peppering the voluble Gingrich with inquiries, and me, directly behind the Speaker, a few paces back...

...Eventually, he'll run aground...

...As with any quick reportorial account of a legislative season, the book is filled with detail and stuffed with revealing anecdotes, all leading nobody-quite-knowswhere: Gingrich weeping, Tom Daschle whining, Dick Armey sighing, Bill Clinton dissembling, Tom Delay fuming, David Bonior snarling, Bob Dole snickering, Leon Panetta scuttling along the wall...

...Drew's appreciation is mixed, but fair...

...In early 1995, no one could have anticipated the skill with which Clinton played his weakened hand, or the fierce determination of Democrats in Congress to defend particular interests by demonizing Gingrich (which was not hard to do) or play off the seeming incapacity of Republicans (Gingrich excepted) to defend their beliefs, or argue their principles, in terms understood by an audience of voters...

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...While Newt Gingrich, with Elizabeth Drew by his side, batted his head against congressional walls, Bill Clinton sailed his rudderless ship around the country, tacking whichever way the winds blew...

...It is no exaggeration to say that, prior to Gingrich's arrival on the scene, the idea of Republican control of Congress was very nearly inconceivable...

...There are, to begin with, the Speaker's obvious strengths: He is an astute analyst of national trends, a skilled strategist, a visionary leader, an inspirational leader of troops...

...Just as he thought long in politics, he thought long about the world beyond politics—and how that would affect politics...

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...Ostensibly, this analysis is correct...

...Moreover, like many politicians and most journalists, he confuses temporal success with permanent accomplishment...

...History is written by prejudiced scholars, but reporting is the frenzied acquisition of facts, a preliminary sketch...

...As the President admitted to Congress in January, "The era of big govemment is over...

...but her lichen-like attachment to Newt Gingrich was remarkable...

...There is the knife blade, of course...

...Some of his ideas about the future sounded odd," she continues, "but not all of them were...

...but her smooth coordination among eye contact, pertinent questions, pen to paper, and marching in time at a blistering pace without tripping on the pavement, was impressive to observe...

...It was a cold winter's day, and the wind was blowing...

...You have 30-day return si privilege, in the unlikely case that you won't be fully pleased...

...time, not a happy augury for Gingrich...

...So why do things look bleak these days for Gingrich and his allies, leaving "the already discouraged Republicans even more dispirited," as Drew suggests...

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...The idea was audacious," says Drew, "but audacity had long been one of Gingrich's weapons...

...Her thesis is that Gingrich began his tenure as Speaker determined (and likely) to transform the landscape of federal government, but ended his crucial maiden year outmaneuvered by Clinton, harried by the Democrats, and watching his prestige wither away...

...Mail to: 0. 185 Berry St., San •The GPK isfashioned after the officers knife of a renowned European army...

...Ai 76 July 199 6 The American Spectator...

...the Republicans seemed possessed by statistics, technicalities, and inside-the-Beltway procedural reforms...

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...Only Newt Gingrich believed it could be done, and he did it...

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...It is not for nothing that Clinton's present political strength derives from his adoption of Gingrich-style principles...

...Hidden inside (just pull them out...

...And quoting a House Republican: "The smart thing Newt did was to say out loud, from the beginning, that we'd take over the House...

...Like many scholars in politics, Gingrich is better at describing thetactical designs of past leaders—the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt—than contriving a system to fit his own needs...

...Of course, there was no reason for her to notice my presence in the opening scene, inasmuch as she wouldn't know me if I fell into her lap...

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...new ideas in governance tend to germinate in the provinces, bred largely by a stable of Republican governors, before journeying to Washington...

...Washington's biggest and newest star, trailed by family members, aides, and security detail and preceded by a covey of photographers walking backward, was in an understandably ebullient mood, happily acknowledging the greetings and congratulations of people he passed...

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...Supremely confident, a virtual prime minister, Gingrich mistook the sudden deference of the press, with its instinct for currying favor, as a sign that the struggle to implement his Contract with America, or dismantle the welfare state, was largely a matter of time, and that obstacles (including Bill Clinton) would fall with the same surprising ease as Jim Wright or Tom Foley had...

...Any politician who deliberately invites a journalist to share his triumphs and travails — think of LBJ with Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Stockman with William Greider— is asking for trouble...

...You are getting a great deal and you'll be delighted...

...For while Democrats will find much comfort in Showdown, it may prove in time to be a cold sort of comfort...

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...In truth, while Gingrich lost a series of battles—especially in the realm of public relations — and strengthened an otherwise weak chief executive, he and his colleagues have largely prevailed in the war of issues...

...nce 1967 averhilir Francisco, CA 94107 The American Spectator • July 199 6 75 1994, was expected (though not by me) to be swept back into office...

...Corrupt and contented, wielding power since the dawn of living memory, they were ripe for defeat, and richly deserved the rebuke they endured...

...Since the struggle over Medicare has abated for the moment, and the budget remains as unbalanced as ever, the author arrives at the obvious conclusion: "The government was likely to lurch along until the voters had their say...

...Since 193o the Democrats had ruled the House of Representatives, with two brief, one-term exceptions...

...et, in its small body it carries some implements that'll come in handy in life's little contingencies...

...It represents very nearly a wholesale adoption ofmodem conservative principles about the problems of society and the scope and breadth of government, something which no politician before Gingrich, including Ronald Reagan, was able to achieve...

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...His faith in a certain vision of politics, combined with an unrelenting energy and drive, brought about a virtual miracle in the capital...

...The book does confirm, however, the essential difference between history and journalism...

...Meanwhile Newt Gingrich, who had pushed the Democrats from power in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952, was wildly unpopular, and reviled as a messianic flash in the pan...